Olivia Harrison has written a collection of 20 poems dedicated to her late husband George Harrison, 20 years after his passing with In Came the Lightning: Twenty Poems for George.
Videos by American Songwriter
The book, out June 21 via Genesis Publications, explores Olivia’s life with George, the couple’s love, and facing death through her poetry, in addition to a curated selection of photographs and mementos to accompany the poems, including never-before-seen pictures of herself and George.
Longtime friend and director of the 2011 documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Martin Scorsese wrote the foreword for the book, calling it “an autobiography in both rhyme and reason.”
“Olivia evokes the most fleeting gestures and instants, plucked from the flow of time and memory and felt through her choice of words and the overall rhythm,” said Scorsese. “She might have done an oral history or a memoir. Instead, she composed a work of poetic autobiography.”
A film producer, Harrison also wrote the book George Harrison: Living in the Material World, was a contributor to the book “Concert for George”—both accompanying the respective films—and worked on the revised edition of George Harrison’s 1980 memoir I Me Mine.
Olivia Harrison also co-produced the 2002 film Concert for George, which she organized in memory of her husband and won an Emmy for Outstanding Nonfiction Special in 2012 as producer of the Scorsese-helmed George Harrison: Living in the Material World. She also served as a producer on the recent documentary series The Beatles: Get Back, directed by Peter Jackson.
“Here on the shore, 20 years later, my message in a bottle has reached dry land,” said Olivia Harrison. “Words about our life, his death but mostly love and our journey to the end.”
Photo: Courtesy of Big Hassle Media
